


an impending supernova

by astralscrivener



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith (Voltron)-centric, Keithtober, Keithtober 2018, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-23 08:13:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16155107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralscrivener/pseuds/astralscrivener
Summary: A collection of drabbles/ficlets centered on Keith, for theKeithtober 2018 challenge.Given up at Day 4: In the FutureEach flashback or flashforward comes without warning.





	1. i. red paladin

**Author's Note:**

> i did julance...why would i not do keithtober...smh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith looks into the Red Paladin's role.
> 
> Canon-verse, early in s1.

## i. red paladin

            Contrary to popular belief, Keith studies.

            He studies things that fascinate him, things that perplex him, things that’ll come in handy one day, in _his_ opinion, and not the opinion of some random instructor who’s just going to assign him a grade and then move on, without ever really bringing up the topic again. Keith dives headfirst into findings and works his ass off from every possible angle to find conventional solutions, unconventional solutions. Gather information, plan, execute. Sometimes he gathers information _as_ he executes, with no plan. Sometimes he plans with no information and never executes.

            Point is, his brain’s an encyclopedia, of sorts. Cluttered and messy and sometimes he can’t always remember what he’s looking for, but it’s all there, filed away somewhere. Not exactly a state of organized chaos, mostly just chaos, but if something’s important enough, he’ll find it eventually. Sometimes it’ll come up even when he _doesn_ _’t_ want to find it. Like now.

            The holopad Keith holds nearly falls out of his trembling fingers as his eyes scan over the words, over and over again. Altean, translated to English. A profile on the Red Paladin, and all of their roles and duties. Pilot of the Red Lion. Voltron’s Right Hand.

            Guardian Spirit of Fire.

            _“He was one of our bravest, kiddo.”_

_Heavy hands, gloved hands, faces and people Keith vaguely recognizes as his dad_ _’s colleagues, faces he didn’t deem important enough to commit to memory fully. Husbands and wives and other kids with sympathetic looks who tell him how sorry they are. There aren’t many, few enough for Keith to pick out names, all names his dad talked about before. John, with the burn scar trailing the side of his face. Kennedy, with the short blonde hair. Brenda, Mack, Smith._

_Not one of them saved his father._

_Keith sits, numb, paralyzed, and listens to these people in the small chapel as they eulogize his father, sandwiched in-between them for some kind of warped version of support. He doesn_ _’t want support, doesn’t want stiff hugs and cold handshakes. He wants his dad, wants him to walk in the door tired but with a smile—_

_Tears sting Keith_ _’s eyes, burning, searing. A different stinging-burning-searing than whatever his dad must’ve felt, a less painful version, and that thought only makes the tears come harder as Keith screws his eyes shut and stifles his gasp, his cry. His hands ball into fists and he shrinks in on himself, and hates the hands that come back down on his shoulders, the whispers asking if he’s okay, if he wants—no, do you need?—to step outside._

Stop crying, _he tells himself._ Stop. No tears. Stop it. They’ll go away if you stop crying.

_So he shakes his head at them, his whole body trembling with the effort it takes to sniffle and drag an angry sleeve over his face, as he tells himself then that he_ _’s not gonna cry. His dad is gone and his mom’s been gone for some time and he’s going back to the home when this whole thing is over, but he’s not gonna cry. Not anymore._

“Keith?”

            Keith’s head snaps up, hard enough to give him whiplash. He sets the holopad down, the glow of the screen dying as Shiro pokes his head into the room. Keith scrubs a hand over his face, and his glove comes away dry. No tears. Maybe his eyes are glassy and a little puffy, but nothing’s escaped. He can get away with this one.

            _You_ _’re a Paladin, now,_ Keith tells himself, and schools his face into nonchalance. _Paladins don_ _’t cry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have an essay due in 22 hours i haven't finished


	2. ii. black paladin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A new pilot for the Black Lion._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> keith sweetie i'm so sorry

## ii. black paladin

            _Black Paladin. Black Paladin. Black Paladin. Black Paladin._

            Bruises, dark rings underneath eyes and split knuckles and Keith is no older than twelve when he punches someone in the face for mocking the void, the storm cloud over his head, the shadow that’s always following him around. He only regrets that he couldn’t land harder hits, faster hits before they were dragged apart and he nearly flunked out right then and there, a future slipping from between his fingers. And Shiro swooped in and salvaged the pieces, salvaged them again.

            _A new pilot for the Black Lion._

            He’s too young to understand abandonment and he’s ten when he truly learns loss and he’s twelve when he learns he’s always known bitterness. He’s sixteen-nearly-seventeen when he experiences greater loss, greater heartache, greater abandonment, and bitterness is there to hold him. The dark core of his heart unfurls to nestle him in its cold embrace and it’s the one thing in life he doesn’t run from, because it’s the only thing that’s stuck around.

            _You_ _’re the Black Lion’s pilot, now._

            At eighteen he learns shock and fear and joy, learns that maybe some people are worth letting in, worth letting have your back. He doesn’t learn more pain because there’s nothing about that he didn’t learn before; and that’s what he thinks before he takes a blow that knocks him back into the unforgiving void, drifting and drifting until he’s caught in a black hole and has nothing to tether him, nothing to draw him back out. Twisting and pulling and stretching, digging until it finds its twin in his chest. A vacuum meant for a vacuum.

            _Black Paladin._

            He can’t.

            The controls light up under his touch but he’s shaking his head and whispering, pleading, _please choose someone else, not me, I_ _’m not cut out for this._ Another void, he’s walked into another fucking _void_ , two shoes with endless space to fill and he’ll never be able to do that, not even if he bleeds every last part of himself dry. His heart’s pounding and his lungs aren’t working and his fingers tremble when they release, and they clutch again, clutch his chest because this isn’t happening there’s no way he can’t replace Shiro the _team_ can’t replace Shiro they don’t _understand—_

            _I should_ _’ve abandoned you, just like your parents did._

            And suddenly Keith is small again and a bigger boy is grinning and reveling in their victory and Keith is looking his worst fears in the face. He’s spent so long looking, Shiro can’t give up too, Shiro _told him_ he’d never give up and here he is and Keith can’t bring himself to fight back, he only feels that darkness squeezing its heart, winding around his muscles and locking them into place, shooting through his blood and turning his insides cold as the unforgiving universe that took Shiro in the first place.

            _I can_ _’t…I can’t reach her anymore._

_You_ _’re her true Paladin, now, Keith._

And more often than not, Keith wakes in a cold sweat. More often than not there’s a scream on his lips and his mom’s gone his dad’s gone his big brother’s gone and there is only cold, only metal, only a Lion roaring and beckoning him toward an endless war, endless void, endless pinpricks of light in the great wide nowhere that he can never touch no matter how far he drifts, because he’s the Black Paladin, black for dark black for night black for void black for no light, and the harder he tries the harder he falls and the darkness laughs, sweeps him into an embrace and claims him for its own.

            _Zarkon. Takashi Shirogane. Keith Kogane._

            Black for death. Black for doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY
> 
> i'm sitting here the days before keithtober going "well this can't be as painful as julance, right"
> 
> I WAS WRONG


	3. iii. childhood memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He tries hard to forget._
> 
> Canon-verse, dunno when. s2? post-s6?? idfk up to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me to me: bls stop hurting keith  
> also me to me: ANGST  
> me to me: u absolute bitch

## iii. childhood memories

            He tries hard to forget.

            Remembering brings back pain, a spear through a heart too weak to handle so much grief. Maybe another time he could have handled it, but the hard shell that protected his desires, protected his warmth, it’s fallen away and it’s left him bare, susceptible, weak where he can’t be. Maybe in another life he’d let himself indulge in the pain and anguish and hope exposure to it would dull the knife buried up to its hilt over time, but not now.

            When he runs on the training deck until his lungs burn, he blocks out the memories of sprinting over sand dunes in the desert, his personal playground, a backyard bigger than most people grew up with, more dangerous than other parents would be comfortable with. Sand shifting and sliding underfoot; hard-packed dirt where he scraped knees and elbows when he hit a rock and tripped and fell but got back up and kept going because _Koganes aren_ _’t quitters, you hear me, Keith? Koganes always get back up and keep trying._

            When he takes to target practice with his Marmora knife, he focuses on anything but the memories of his frustrated nights moving from foster family to foster family, each one less inviting than the last. He focuses on anything but the one family, his foster sibling who discovered his knife and tried to turn it into his foster father, and Keith bolted out the door and never looked back—not until he was caught and brought back to the home, awaiting another family to take him in. They searched him for a knife and found nothing, because by then Keith got good at being sneaky.

            When he’s on missions, darting from dark corner to dark corner, slinking through shadows, he doesn’t think about the nights he spent sneaking around, tiptoeing around foster parents and siblings, slipping out to see the stars. Doesn’t think about the nights he snuck away to the desert on his dad, playing the part of some secret agent or ninja, some silent superhero who keeps the city safe at night when all the other heroes are sleeping and resting up for their day shifts. He doesn’t think about the Garrison, years spent discovering new hiding spots, new rooms to break into, a fresh-faced recruit with a need to get away.

            When the team gathers in the lounge and Coran regales the group with tales from the old days of Altea, or tries to teach them a new song in a voice painfully off-key, Keith stays away from the memories of his dad’s lullabies in the evening, the country music blaring from the garage on the weekends, the songs he’d sing during the day as he went about doing chores, some of them in a tongue Keith wouldn’t learn until later on was Galra. He just knew those weird songs were some kind of tribute to his mom, and he let his dad keep on singing, and on occasion he’d try to join.

            When he spots Shiro hanging around the castleship with a vacant look in his eye, a longing gaze that’s both seeing and not seeing, Keith doesn’t dare let in the thoughts of their first meeting, of the brighter and more ambitious Shiro from back then, the Garrison star, the Garrison record-breaker. He doesn’t think about Shiro with Adam, doesn’t think about Shiro riding a speeder over a cliff and whooping while Keith looked on in awe, and resolved then and there to find a way to make that jump, to make it _better_.

            Everything around Keith brings up ghosts of a past that should stay buried, _needs_ to stay buried. He’s got no holy water to banish these spirits, and they haunt him day and night. Sometimes groaning lowly. Sometimes screeching, begging for Keith to notice them, while Keith just pulls up his collar and jams his hands into his pockets and carries on. Childhood is gone, and it’s never coming back. No do-overs, no second chances. There is only looking ahead, looking forward. He didn’t get to live carefree when he was young, not like most of his peers. His teenage years haven’t treated him that well, either, and adulthood’s looking just as bleak.

            But at least he can change the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY I SWEAR I'M NOT DOING THIS ON PURPOSE


	4. iv. in the future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Each flashback or flashforward comes without warning._
> 
> Canon-verse, during Keith and Krolia's trip on the space whale during s6.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lbr how many of u predicted the space whale

## iv. in the future

            Keith spent most of his mom’s speech about the quantum abyss in a state of shock, a state of _I_ _’m too busy freaking out internally to comprehend a word you’re saying so I’m just gonna pretend I know what’s going on until I figure things out for myself._ The science of it all’s gone right over his head. He just knows that occasionally, he’ll be plunged into his past or his mother’s past or they’ll get glimpses of each others’ futures. Each flashback or flashforward comes without warning. Sometimes he’s sleeping, and it’s not until he wakes up that he realizes it wasn’t a dream. Sometimes he’s wide awake, and suddenly he’ll find himself on the ground with his heart trying to break out of his ribcage, hammering away at a hundred miles an hour.

            He sees his father more than he’d like to, sees his mother back on Earth, sees himself as a curious toddler and then an adventurous kid, then a scruffy preteen and an angry teenager. He sees the other Paladins, sees unknown planets, sees innumerable Galra ships, sees Lotor looking worse for wear, sees Lotor’s generals, sees the one from the weblum coming at him with a serrated blade right before he jerks back to reality, gasping for breath like he’s been stabbed in the lung.

            But it’s his most recent plunge into one timeframe or the other that sets him on edge.

            It’s the future, it must be. Keith stands in the corner of a cozy little house, the walls a shade of pale blue and sunlight streaming through gauzy white curtains, billowing in the breeze. There’s a couch, and two armchairs, and a coffee table that doesn’t look entirely human in design. Keith’s stomach lurches as he takes things in, takes in the slightly tacky decor that shrieks _McClain._ From here, Keith also spots a wall full of photos. It’s all of the Paladins in various situations, although some photos are clearer from here than others, others that are streaked with the sun’s reflection, making it impossible to see faces.

            His eyes flit back to the coffee table, and he realizes with a dropping heart that it’s some fusion, of Altean and Earthen handiwork. Which might mean the war is over, and it may or may not also mean—

            Keith freezes in his place, breath catching in the back of his throat as the door opens, but these are glimpses into something he can’t alter. They can’t see him here, for whatever reason, and he presses back, presses in behind an obnoxiously tall potted plant and peers through foliage as an older-looking _Lance fucking McClain_ waltzes into the house, whistling. His hair’s still straight, in a cowlick that departs from the curls of the rest of his family. The cowlick stops halfway down his head and turns into a fade, revealing aged scars whose origins Keith doesn’t want to know. His face, too, is scarred, one scar cutting across his eye.

            Keith swallows thickly, and makes himself look away, look at the wiry arms corded with muscle from what must be hours upon hours of sharpshooting, look at the scars that trail up and down his skin…

            _Why so many scars?_

            _Don_ _’t, don’t do this, Keith._

            So he doesn’t. He looks up and down the rest of Lance, and his heart stutters in his chest when he spots the ring on Lance’s finger. Like the coffee table, it’s not completely Earthen. It’s a beautiful band, made for a wedding, no doubt, and Keith doesn’t know why the hell Lance would have a fusion band like that unless…

            Footsteps steal Keith’s attention, and for a gut-wrenching moment he wonders why he’s here, wonders why he has to see Allura emerging from another part of the house, what the _point_ of seeing this is if this isn’t even his own future. But then everything stops and his doubt fractures, falls away, and the pieces transform into shock, disbelief, _this must be a dream instead of another quantum vision or whatever_ , because it’s not Allura who enters the room.

            It’s himself.

            He’s older, and a little taller, and there’s an angry scar deep on the right side of his face, and his hair’s longer and pulled back into a ponytail, but Keith would recognize himself, would recognize the purple eyes that don’t come from Earth, don’t come from any human. Like Lance, his bare arms display far more scars than Keith is comfortable with, but it’s his left hand that really gets his attention.

            He’s wearing a matching wedding band.

            Keith’s eyes burn before he realizes what’s going on, and it’s like the vision has a mind of its own. Once it realizes that Keith is on the verge of tears, once it realizes that Future Keith is about to open his smiling mouth and greet Future Lance, the whole thing vanishes, and Keith finds himself gasping, a few tears escaping as he hits his knees in the grass. Kosmo’s already there, and nudges Keith’s arm with his snout.

            “Keith?” Krolia asks, and kneels down a foot or so away, keeping distance in case Keith does something stupid like pull his knife, which he may or may not have done after the last time he had a vision in his sleep.

            “M-Mom, I-I…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen,,, lemme klance it up for a minute k
> 
> see ya tomorrow


End file.
